J.R.R.Tolkien … In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet and university professor best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of theRings.
In 1925 Tolkien took up the professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford.
During his time at Pembroke College Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, whilst living with his wife and three sons at 20 Northmoor Road in North Oxford. Being a full-time academic meant that much of his writing would have been done at his home in the evenings.

Tolkien recollects that he began work on The Hobbit one day early in the 1930s, when he was marking School Certificate papers. He found a blank page. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

At the desk in the window Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and much of Lord of the Rings. The children recall the clutter on the desk: a dark-brown wooden tobacco jar, a Toby jug containing pipes and a large bowl for ash.

20 Northmoor Road was the Tolkien’s family home in Oxford from 1930-1947.

He then moved to Manor Road, Hollywell Street and Sandfield Road before finally relocating to Bournemouth in Dorset.